Chapter Nine: The Case of the Ingenious A

Table of Contents 

 Chapter Nine: The Case of the Ingenious A

116. Law's 1800 house became the fulcrum of the New Varnum Hotel

Thomas Law had a design in hand a few months before the General, and almost a year before John Tayloe III. Even though the two designs were radically different, Glenn Brown decided that Thornton designed Tayloe's Octagon and the two boarding houses the General built on Capitol Hill. One hundred years later, because both Law's and Tayloe's houses had oval rooms, C. M. Harris decided that Thornton also designed Law's house.(1) Law could have been a central figure forwarding Thornton's fame. His wife Eliza gave Law entree to Mount Vernon, and the General respected his enthusiasm for the federal city. If Law had settled on a design drawn by Thornton, he would have told the General. If the General was impressed by what Thornton drew for his two houses, the General would have told Tayloe. Law hardly knew Tayloe, but the General had known Tayloe’s father and admired his only son. Tayloe's Octagon is the gem of the city's early architecture. Much depended on whom Law asked to design his house.

There was another similarity between Law's and Tayloe's projects. William Lovering was the superintending architect for both projects. He contracted to visit the site at least once a week and verify the quality and delivery of building materials, coordinate the various contractors doing masonry and carpentry, and inspect and measure the work. Traditionally, it was assumed that the builder also drew the house design in consultation with the owner. Then almost 50 years old, Lovering was an experienced builder.

There was a problem that Law faced that Tayloe didn't. The latter wanted to build one house. Law had bought 350 building lots. Because he signed a contract with Greenleaf, that he didn’t fully read, he was obliged to build 166 houses. His predicament was well known. When discussing future projects with Nicholson, Lovering speculated that 166 two story houses with dormer windows would be easy to build and easy to sell. That suggests that he knew of and sympathized with Law's problem. Nicholson probably calculated that getting a contract from Law to build 166 houses would solve his and Lovering's problems with insolvency.(2)

Law knew what Lovering had built. While not designed by Lovering, the first house in the city that the Laws lived in, the so-called Honeymoon House at the west end of N Street SW, was finished by Lovering. When work began on Law's brick buildings on the commercial end of New Jersey Avenue, the Twenty Buildings on South Capitol and N Street SW attracted all the attention. Lovering designed that project and supervised building ten of them. Law couldn't hire Lovering because he was Greenleaf's salaried employee, then Morris's and then Nicholson's, not that they ever fully paid his salary. In October 1797, Lovering finally hung out his shingle, so to speak. In Washington, Georgetown and Alexandria newspapers, he advertised his skills as “Architect, Surveyor and Builder and c." including "to design and make drawings, plans and estimates..." In his Alexandria notice, he added to the headline "(From London)." Was he trying to attract Law's attention? The money he made in India did not relieve Law from living up to London standards. His brother Edward was its most famous lawyer and soon to become Lord Ellenborough.(3)

When he turned his attention to housing congressmen, Law knew that Lovering had built, and presumably had designed, quality row houses for Greenleaf. He was obviously the most experienced builder around, but he had problems. Nicholson's failure left Lovering mired in lawsuits. In that era, American law was kind to debtors in that suits dragged on which delayed payments of debts and penalties. In a March 30, 1798, letter, Lovering crowed to Nicholson that he finally freed himself from the “clutches” of Carroll. That suit dated from 1794. Then in August, he wrote that Carroll was about to win another court judgment against him. Nicholson’s legion of creditors were Lovering’s bane. In 1796, when Lovering tried to pay for building supplies with Nicholson’s checks, they invariably bounced leaving Lovering liable for the debt. In January 1798, Nicholson’s creditors had Lovering arrested for nonpayment. The judge would not let Lovering post bail because he did not own any property. The sheriff posted bail for him, which allowed him to dun Lovering for petty cash on demand. For Lovering, the alternative was going to jail. All this happened after the Maryland legislature’s relatively short annual session. That prevented him from getting relief under the state's new insolvency law until the legislature reassembled in December. If granted, he could work without the money he made being attached by creditors.(4)

Evidently, Law assumed that by the time work began on his largest brick house that had to be ready by 1800, Lovering would no longer be harassed by lawsuits. By September 12, they had signed a contract which described a house with oval rooms. However, there is no evidence that Law was interested in Thornton as an architect. He had cultivated Hadfield to keep track of work at the Capitol. Meanwhile, Commissioner Thornton had not pleased Law. In 1795 he opposed giving Law deeds unless he paid for lots. In 1796, Law not only faulted Thornton for not moving to the city, he was enraged that Thornton spread a rumor that the General wanted his private residence in the city on Peter's Hill near Georgetown. Then in 1797, Law realized that President Adams had no interest in the city. He could no longer go over the heads of the commissioners. He needed a friend on the board and Thornton was the most congenial and accessible.(5)

By the spring of 1798, the Thorntons had become the best friends of the Thomas Laws. In May, the Thorntons dined with the Washingtons at the Laws in their so-called second house on New Jersey Avenue which preceded the last and largest third house. On the weekend of June 24, 1798, the Thorntons had tea with the Laws. That same weekend the commissioner drafted the personal letter to Pickering that he didn't send. He explained Hadfield's insubordination in regards to the Executive office design, and that "the board applied to Mr. Lovering to calculate the expense of erecting such a building." After "Mr. Lovering," Thornton wrote and then crossed out "an ingenious A." Evidently, the rhetorician realized that the secretary of state might misinterpret that aside as a complement relating to Lovering's plain Executive office design. What likely had impressed Thornton was the house design Law had just shown him. Why else would Thornton think that Lovering was an "ingenious A"rchitect the same weekend he had tea with Law?(6)

In all the projects Lovering had worked on, he fulfilled the visions of his patrons. The store front windows on South Capitol were exceptional, and Mr. Henry, Greenleaf’s secretaire economic, was impressed with a 32 foot long room that Lovering fit into one of Greenleaf’s townhouses. However, there is no evidence that Thornton knew anything about Lovering’s previous residential work. No one then or now thought that his cheapening Hadfield's Executive office design was ingenious. Architectural historian Pamela Scott rues that instead of ''Hadfield’s sophisticated, up-to-date neoclassical building," the city got "a traditional, rather old-fashioned Georgian one."(7) Lovering asked the board to hire him to build his design. But the board put his design out for bids and Lovering's was the third lowest. So he did not show his ingenuity as a building contractor for the commissioners. In January 1798, the commissioners asked him to evaluate sashes offered by carpenters for the Capitol. He found that one needed an extra inch, with another static electricity might be a worry. As for the third, the molding was too thin. His ability to school everyone might make Lovering an ingenious carpenter but not an "ingenious A." Thornton had never commented on the design features of the Twenty Buildings and nothing about the small houses likely pleased such an exponent of grandeur. That leaves a current project, the design for Law's house, as what likely was on Thornton's mind when he almost complimented Lovering.(8)

However, how could the floor plan for a house squeezed into a city building lot strike anyone as ingenious? Law decided to build a house in Lot 1 of Square 689 that faced the intersection, of New Jersey Avenue and C Streets SE. Tayloe had bought the largest lot in Square 170 which promised great things. Law choose a more constricted lot, one of the smaller corner lots in the square, a fulcrum facing two streets with ample frontage for two facades but little room behind them.

Division Sheet for Square 689

The design for the house is not extant, nor is the house. A House of Representatives office building now fills Square 689. 

 

The floor plans with oval rooms in Thornton's papers don’t resemble it. Not that there is any reason to assume that Thornton’s ovals inspired Law. Hoban’s oval rooms in the President’s house had already been built. Oval rooms became fashionable in late 18th century Britain and France. New country seats had them. In 1786, while on a prolonged stay in England, William Hamilton sent instructions on how to build Woodlands, then outside Philadelphia but now in that city's Fairmount Park. His mansion would have two notable oval rooms, a parlor and dining room. Another mansion now in the park, Lemon Hill, which was built in 1800, also has oval rooms. An architectural historian notes "its use of ovals and circular spaces suggests a French influence." On 10th and Chestnut Streets, then comfortably outside the crowded city, L'Enfant's very French mansion built for Robert Morris also had "curvilinear elements," but the architect who gave the federal city so many angled avenues had none to address in Philadelphia. L'Enfant did not use ovals. However, putting oval rooms in a confined townhouse as opposed to a rambling country house or a monumental building like the Capitol or President's house would be more challenging.

 

The only sketch of the floor plan is in a letter Benjamin Latrobe wrote to the gentleman who bought the house from Law in 1815. The buyer wanted to upgrade the heating system. Latrobe suggested "a handsome grate" for the principal oval room, an oval marked "B" in his sketch.

 

In an 1800 letter, Law delighted in describing it: “on the ground floor there is a handsome oval room 32 by 24 and a room adjoining 20 by 28 - the oval room is so handsomely furnished that I wish to leave the eagle round glasses, carpet and couches in them as they are suited to the room - above stairs is a dressing room and a bedroom 21 by 20 - a center room with a fireplace about 17 by thirteen, an oval room 30 by 25 - and a room 20 by 11 with a fireplace - the same upstairs - say 8 bed rooms or 7 bedrooms and an oval sitting room…." One entrance and stairway on New Jersey Avenue, marked A in Latrobe's sketch, granted access to each floor. The thrust and energy of the oval rooms balanced a grand view looking down on the confluence of the Potomac and Eastern Branch a mile away. One did not peak at the view through bow windows. One would vibrate with the emporium on view. The kitchen below had a fan shape that Law would sketch in a letter he wrote. The ballroom in Latrobe's sketch was in the next door house that Law financed but another man contracted to have built. Through that arrangement, a judge would give Law credit toward fulfilling his obligation to build 166 houses. 

 

All the above explains the excitement. But is there evidence that there was a design when Thornton allegedly saw it on June 24, 1798? According to the commissioners' records, the lot for Law's house was surveyed on September 12. However, on July 10, 1798, Lovering asked them to apply their payment for his Executive Office design as down payment on lot 12 in Square 691, southwest of the intersection of New Jersey Avenue and C Streets SE. He likely made the request because he knew Law was going to build on the intersection. That suggests that Law had Lovering's design by July 10.

In 1801, another client of Lovering's described how the architect designed and contracted to build houses. The Belgian emigre Henri Joseph Stier broke off negotiations with Benjamin Latrobe for a country mansion in nearby Maryland. Latrobe struck him as “one of those who do not finish their work." He sought out Lovering. In 1800, in a letter to Greenleaf, Law mentioned that “Steer” was staying in one of his houses. Perhaps Law told Stier about Lovering.

Stier's letters explained how Lovering tried to win a client. Lovering came, Stier wrote to his son, “expressly to show me three different plans, rather ingenious but complicated, and with unattractive facades.... He has proposed to direct my construction with such a plan as I will give him, to attend to the progress and the designs in detail, to come twice each week, and that if I want to hire enough workmen to finish it in twelve months, he will do it for $600....”

In her introduction to a collection of Stier's daughter's letters, Margaret Callcott writes that Lovering "was eager to make himself agreeable to the wealthy Belgium, and all during March [1801] he met regularly with the Stiers and gave them tours around completed houses around Washington." They signed a contract on March 24, 1801, a month after first discussing the project. Architectural historians give Lovering little credit for the design of Riverdale since Stier based the design on his house in Belgium.

127. Stier's Riverdale

Lovering might have started working on Law’s design around June 12, a month before Law asked him to draw up a contract. Of course, that Thornton reacted positively to an eccentric floor plan on June 24  doesn’t necessarily prove that it was Lovering design. It might have been Law’s idea drawn by Lovering, but it certainly wasn’t Thornton’s idea. Lot 1 in Square 689 faced two problems. Not only did it face an angled intersection, but it also had a slope angling down to the street in a way to require another story. An addendum to the contract, already 8 pages long, explained “It being found on examining the ground that Mr. Lovering will have an additional story to make….” The addendum authorized Lovering to correct the problem and also clarified what may have been sticking points not addressed in the contract as written by Lovering. It allowed that "any alteration in the above plan to be allowed for by either party as may be settled between themselves or arbitrators." It designated Hoban and another builder to “arbitrate on any points of dispute.” Law and Lovering were locked in the age old dance between patron and creator and Thornton was not even in the ballroom.

The contract is extant, though not widely known. Archivists mislabeled the eleven page document as being written "circa 1794," so it escaped the scrutiny of researchers interested in what Law was planning to build in 1798. The document begins "Particular description and manner of building a house for Thomas Law Esq. fronting the side of New Jersey Avenue and South C Street on Square 689 for $5800 as per drawings marked A.B.C.D.... " The document then specifies building materials, dimensions, and the use of latches, sashes, etc. The "elliptical rooms" are mentioned but not described save for their height, 12 feet and 10 feet respectively, and that their walls were to be framed by wood scantling. Unfortunately, drawings A.B.C.D. have not been found but they were likely Lovering's designs. The contract does not explicitly say that Lovering drew the designs.

However, because of his financial difficulties, Lovering confronted the commissioners in a way that proves that Thornton had no part in designing Law’s house. During the building season of 1798, Lovering faced two problems: How to make money without losing it all to Nicholson's creditors, and how to acquire property without paying for it with money. He was told that owning property would leave him less at the mercy of judges and sheriffs.

Lovering still had two more payments to make to the board for the lot he bought near Law's houses. On October 4, he handed the board a letter protesting their not paying him more for his Executive Office design. He asked the board that future payments be used to cover two more annual payments on the lot. He was clutching at straws. The board had never said it would pay him more than $300, and it told him so. They advised him to take cash and not the lot. Lovering shot back, “I devoted Chearfully my time and Attention to the Office and have saved you at least 10,000 [for two office buildings] in particularizing the Building design and tho it would be natural for you Gentlemen unacquainted with the trouble of architectural details to under estimate my Services.…” Would he have insulted Thornton if he had been involved in designing Law’s house?

Then again, why did Lovering insult Thornton when he needed his help as a commissioner? Law’s support and their mutual understanding that Lovering was essential for the completion of Law’s project likely gave Lovering the courage. That his immigrant’s hopes of being cheerfully working were dashed by financial pressures likely fueled his anger. During the summer of 1798, ever worried that he might be arrested, the arrival of his adult son from his first marriage added to Lovering's burdens. He began to plan a return to England. At the end of August, a friend of Nicholson's warned the speculator of the possible loss of “a man of abilities." Laying out Law's lot two weeks later kept him in the country. In the fall of 1798, while Lovering waited for the Maryland legislature to convene, he had to advertise his intention to ask for protection under Maryland's insolvency laws. His advertisement excited his creditors, who then leaned on the sheriff to arrest him. On December 4, Lovering wrote to Nicholson that “the advertisement of my intentions has been a great injury to me for I should have had several buildings.…" One of those buildings may have been Tayloe’s house. 

Lovering’s letters to Nicholson are the only sources for what the architect did in 1799 and in none of those letters did he mention Law's house. By billing Joseph Clark $33,000 for building materials, Greenleaf had demonstrated how unmercifully the speculators could turn on their contractors. It behooved Lovering not tell Nicholson that he had made money or that he worked for someone like Law who had been threatening to sue the speculators over not getting deeds to the property he bought from them. The only evidence that Lovering did indeed build Law’s houses is a gleeful letter Law wrote the General about finalizing the contract for his house in late April 1799. and his writing “settled” on the contract he had signed with Lovering. Just a week before Law’s April letter,  Lovering finally got insolvency protection. Law helped, but the case will be made in another chapter that Tayloe’s friends likely pulled the strings that saved Lovering.

Cases made on likely suppositions are not as strong as they could be, but the contract Law and Lovering signed should relieve any doubt that Thornton was not involved. However, given any paucity of evidence, historians are practiced in drawing inferences from documents dated after the events being described. The future becomes the prologue to the past. This tips any narrative to the advantage of gentlemen who had the leisure and standing to write to Washington, Jefferson and Madison, and the fame to inspire preservation of the rest of their letters. Also, in Thornton’s case, his wife kept a diary in 1800, and it has been mined to prove what he did in 1798 and 1799.

Nicholson correspondence was preserved because of the magnitude of his debt, $8 million, and resulting lawsuits. Other then those the few he wrote to Morris and the commissioners and one to President Jefferson about a mangle to dry linens, Lovering letters found no repository. After Lovering got protection and work to do, he evidently stopped corresponding with Nicholson who by that time was in Philadelphia’s Prune Street debtors prison along with Morris. Since Thornton and Law were ever active socially  and lived nearby, there is little written correspondence between them. However, Thornton did write to Law, who was then at Mount Vernon, in August 1799 and also in March 1801 when he feared that their friendship had ended. The 1799 letter was primarily about Thornton helping to arbitrate a business dispute unrelated to Law’s house. Then it reports on the doings of the other men married to the Custis sisters. The 1801 letter laments lost friendship: “For a long time past I imagined that I perceived in your behavior a reserve and distance which forbade that free communication with you that frequently took place from a sincere friendship on my part, which I flattered myself was mutual.” The matter was that Law thought Thornton was favoring the west end of the city. Obviously, Thornton had not designed Law’s premier house in the east end.

That said, in January 1800, when Law’s oval rooms could be inspected, Mrs. Thornton’s diary came to the rescue of Thornton’s posthumous reputation. So starved are historians for documentary evidence that the mere mention of Law’s and Tayloe’s house in her diary has been taken as evidence that Thornton designed both. When C. M. Harris and Pamela Scott cite the diary to prove that Thornton designed Law’s house, they shy from actually quoting the diary. Harris merely opines that "Thornton's role... is partially but substantially documented by his wife's diary for 1800." Scott puts it this way: "It was designed by William Thornton, and was 'a very pleasant roomy house' according to Anna Maria Thornton.” Mrs. Thornton wrote more about her inspection of the house with her husband, Mrs. Law’s sister and her husband Thomas Peter. On Sunday January 12, they found Law's house locked. So, they "entered by the kitchen Window and went all over it— It is a very pleasant roomy house but the Oval drawing room is spoiled by the lowness of the Ceiling, and two Niches, which destroy the shape of the Room….” Her only other mention of the house came on February 17: "Mr. Law is fixed in his new house and is quite pleased with it...."

Certainly, that Thornton climbed through the kitchen window to get inside suggests he had some authority, though his friendship with Law and his touring with Mrs. Law's sister might have given him sufficient license to do that. But how does one account for Mrs. Thornton's criticism of the oval drawing room's low ceiling? Her husband likely informed it. In 1797, Thornton had written to Dr. Fothergill about the Capitol's as yet unbuilt grand oval vestibule that was 114 feet in diameter and "full of broad prominent lights and broad deep shadows." He originally called the grand oval vestibule “the dome.” Perhaps, when he saw the floor plan for Law’s house, he did not understand that the oval rooms would be 12 and 10 feet high. Fitting oval rooms into a five story townhouse was alien to Thornton's sensibilities.2 By the way, Tayloe's oval room also had a 12 foot ceiling.

 

All that said, Thornton did draw a design for Law, and Mrs. Thornton’s diary provides the only evidence that he did. Perhaps because drawing a stables doesn’t qualify one for designing an elegant five story brick house with oval rooms, historians don’t mention it. Also, any inference that the genius who designed the stables behind a house also designed the house is dangerous in this case. There is conclusive documentary evidence that Lovering designed the stables and coach house next to Tayloe’s house. The plans are annotated in Lovering’s hand. However, the excitement Mrs. Thornton exhibited for the stables in contrast to her recent criticism of the house proves that her husband didn’t design the house. On February 27, 1800, she wrote "Dr. T- received a note from Mr. Law enclosing a rough Sketch of a plan for a Stables & c. behind his house which is five stories before and three behind, which Dr. T- had promised to lay down for him as he had suggested the ideas - The Stables and Carriage house are to be built at the bottom of the lot and the whole yard to be covered over at one Story height, and gravelled over, so as to have a flat terrass from the Kitchen story all over the extremity of the lot.... Dr. T- engaged in the evening drawing Mr. Law's plan."3 That was her only description of a Thornton design The boarding house on Square 689 would advertise that it could accommodate 60 horses but evidently no one ever credited Thornton, which was likely fine with a gentleman of his reputation.

However, in November 1799, there was a conjunction of gentlemen inspecting the houses Thornton supposedly designed. If he had, then that the moment passed without his name being associated with the designs is amazing. The letter Law wrote in April 1800 describing his ovals rooms also described the General’s visit to the house in November 1799. Law claimed that “General Washington was so pleased with it, that he said 'I would never recommend to a wife to counteract her husband's wishes but in this instance, and I advise Mrs. Law not to agree to a sale.'" During his visit, the General also saw his own houses and rode to the other side of town to check on Tayloe’s house. On his return to Mount Vernon, he was accompanied by Law and Commissioners Thornton and White. There is no reason to expect that those gentlemen would celebrate William Lovering for what he did, but they might give their fellow gentleman and charming friend Thornton a pat on the back. Then, two weeks after the General’s visit, Thornton himself joined White in writing about Law’s and Tayloe’s house. They formed the board and wrote a letter alerting President Adams that for lack of money the President's house might not be finished when he moved to the city. If so, they claimed there were three houses that might be rented each better than what the president rented in Philadelphia. In a private letter sent in December, White revealed what houses he and Thornton had in mind: Tayloe's house, Law's house and the country house Daniel Carroll had built in 1798 just south of Capitol Hill.

Of course, Thornton had not designed them. However, that he had not been asked to design the General’s houses hurt. For the six months, he plotted to save his reputation as an architect from such a slight.

Go to Chapter 10

1. Brown 1896; Harris, Papers of William Thornton, p. 588.

2. Lovering to Nicholson 

3. Alexandria Advertiser  9 October 1797, p. 4; Edward Law did not become Lord Ellenborough and Lord Chief Judge  until 1802. 

4. Lovering to Nicholson

5. Law to GW 6 October 1796 footnote 7.

6.  WT to Pickering 23-25 June 1798 draft; AMT papers on-line volume one, image 83.

7. Scott, Pamela, "A Communication Between the Offices: Designing the Executive Office Building 1791-1800." White House Historical Association.

8. Lovering to Commrs. 4 January 1798, Commrs. records

9.